This year, Facebook, the social media website, announced that it would cooperate with several news organizations —including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the BBC —to place news stories directly into users' personal Facebook webpage. Stories published using Facebook Instant will load more quickly and keep the style of the original publisher, who will keep all the advertising income the stories earn —at least for now. The deal shows how important social media has become to news organizations, and it is a clear sign of how the world of news is changing —and has been for a while.

    Many thought of it as the death of the newspaper, when Google News began in 2002. It had no human editor. Instead, Google used, and still uses, a secret computer program that selects and displays news stories according to the reader's personal interests. More recently, Associated Press and Yahoo have been punishing computer-written articles. Both use special software to automatically produce stories about company financial results and sports reports —areas where the quality of writing is felt to be of secondary importance to the accuracy of the data.

    I think we should be concerned about such developments. One concern is that Facebook, Google and other social media websites see journalism as a sideline(副业), a way of putting people in front of advertisements. It isn't their primary function —so if it stops making them lots of money, they're likely to stop doing it.

    There's another concern that computer-written articles are not actually journalism at all, because what a human news team produces is actually quite complex. A well-written news story puts information in context, offers a voice to each side of an argument and brings the public new knowledge.

    Though economics and speed of delivery mean readers will probably choose a computer-written story over a carefully shaped article — at least for daily news —I don't think the computers will be writing any in-depth articles for a while yet.

    Ever get that feeling you're being watched? Well, if you're a dog-owner, you may have a point. Dogs are able to watch people's interactions with one another to determine who holds yummier treats, according to a new study. This study joins others that show dogs are good observers of human behaviors and feelings. It offers evidence that dogs use information not only from people's direct interactions with them, but also their interactions with one another.

    In the study, dogs watched a man ask two women for some of their corns. Both women gave the man corns when he asked, but in response to one woman, the man showed his enthusiasm and said the corns were so delicious. In response to the other woman, he gave the corns back and called them gross（in Spanish；the study was conducted in Argentina）. After these interactions, the man left and an assistant holding the dog let the dog go. While many dogs didn't approach either woman, the dogs that did have a preference tended to prefer the woman with the yummier(美味的) food.

    Other studies of dogs' people-watching ability have found dogs are able to tell the difference between happy and sad faces in their owners. They prefer people who give others food when asked over people who don't give others food. And in one study, dogs turned toward crying people more often than toward talking people.

    So how much do dogs really understand about the humans around them? That's not totally settled yet. In a strange twist to the Argentine study above, when the researchers tried an experiment in which they put two plates of corns on a table and had a man react to each plate, dogs didn't preferentially approach the tastier plate afterward. You could say dogs watch for the interaction between two persons, not just how a person reacts. Yet a previous study found dogs will choose boxes that people reacted to happily, but not boxes people reacted to with a disgusted face.

    Well, either way, you can be sure Fluffs is keeping an eye on you, to the best of her ability. The study was published in the journal PLOS One.

    121min Adventure/Biography/Drama

    Storyline: A group of climbers start their final climb to the summit of Mount Everest，the highest point on Earth. With little warning，a violent storm strikes the mountain，swallowing the adventurers...

    Director: Baltasar Kormakur

    Stars:Jason Clarke, Ang Phula Sherpa, Thomas M.Wright

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    War Room

    120min Drama

    Storyline: Tony and Elizabeth Jordan, seemingly have it all--great jobs, a beautiful daughter, their dream home. In reality, their marriage has been a war zone. With guidance from Miss Clara, an older, wiser woman, Elizabeth discovers she can start fighting for her family instead of against them.

    Director: Alex Kendrick

    Stars: Priscilla C. Shirer, T.C. Stalligs, Karen Abercrombie

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    Straight Outta Compton

    147min Biography/Drama/Music

    Storyline: In 1987, five young men, using honest rhymes, put their frustration and anger about life into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Straight Outta Compton tells the true story of how these cultural rebels（叛逆者）stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world's most dangerous group N.W.A.

    Director: F. Gary Gray

    Stars: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell

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    A Walk In The Woods

    104min Adventure/Biography/Comedy

    Storyline: After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson returns to the US, where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail. He travels with Katz, one of his oldest friends. The trouble is that the two have a completely different definition of the word, “adventure”. The real fun begins...

    Director: Ken Kwapis

    Stars: Robort Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson

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    Bedtime on the Orient Express. We stood in the corridor while a woman pulled our bunk beds (双层铺) into place-- there wasn't room in the carriage for all three of us. Barking the news that she would be waking us at 7 a.m. with a cup of instant coffee and a piece of cheese, the woman left and we retired for the night.

    'Bunk beds?' you may be thinking. Small carriage? Instant coffee? This can't be the real Orient Express! Oh, but it is. This is a very real Orient Express indeed. In search of a long weekend in Vienna, there seemed no more attractive way for my friend and me to get there.

    The original Orient Express service was started in 1863. Luxury carriages ran the route from Paris, France to Giugiu, Romania. In 1934, Agatha Christie sent Hercule Poirot on just such a journey in her novel Murder on the Orient Express. However, there was a rise in air travel which was quicker and cheaper and eventually the whole operation was brought to a halt in 1977. The name was reused in 1982, when the Venice Simplon-Orient-Expresss took its first voyage between London and Venice.

    Admittedly I would have loved to take the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, with its on-board shop and piano in the bar, but at around £1,700 per person for a four-night one-way journey, it was too expensive for us. So we chose this excellent way of buying into the romance for a small amount of the cost.

    But we loved it. Ours was no luxury bedroom, but it had its own rough charm-- not to mention the magic of travelling across international borders overnight. I haven't slept in a bunk bed since I was seven, and climbing up into it took 25 years off me. For one night only, it was comfortably appealing. Naturally, I took a copy of Murder on the Orient Express to read on the train. I smiled at the descriptions of airy dining cars and fresh coffee.

    My weekend in Vienna was wonderful and reunited with the cut-price Orient Express at the end of the holiday, we were rather delighted to see our little carriage again. Good old bunk beds. Terrifying old attendant. And best of all, nobody got murdered.

    Exactly five years ago, on New Year's Eve, I was invited to a children's ball by a man high up in the business world, who had his connections, his circle of acquaintances, and his close friends. So it seemed as though the children's ball was merely an excuse for the parents to come together and discuss matters of interest to themselves, quite innocently and casually.

    I was an outsider, and as I had no special matters to express, I was able to spend the evening independently of the others. There was another gentleman present who had just stumbled upon (偶然遇到)this affair of domestic happiness，just like me. He was the first to attract my attention. His appearance was not that of a man of noble birth. He was tall, rather thin, very serious, and well dressed. Obviously he had no heart for the family celebration. The moment he went off into a corner by himself, the smile disappeared from his face, and his thick dark brows knitted into a frown. He knew no one except the host and showed every sign of being bored to death, though bravely keeping the role of thorough enjoyment to the end. Later I learned that he was a provincial, had come to the capital on some important business, had brought a letter of recommendation to our host, and our host had taken him under his protection, not at all with love. It was merely out of politeness that he had invited him to the children's ball.

    They did not play cards with him .They did not offer cigars. Thus , my gentleman , not knowing what to do with his hands , spent the evening stroking his whiskers(胡须). His whiskers were really fine, but he stroked them so eagerly that one got the feeling that the whiskers had come into the world first and afterwards the man, in order to stroke them.

    Mom wanted only one thing for her birthday. "Can you find me another copy of this song?" she asked, and handed me a worn-out cassette tape. I knew exactly what was recorded on it: My Redeemer. I heard the song played at least a thousand times while growing up. After so many years, the cassette tape was too worn out to be used. I promised her I would find a replacement.

    My Redeemer became Mom's favorite song after my younger brother Tim was killed by a drunk driver in 1973. The only thing that helped her calm down was the soulful sound of My Redeemer from the local radio station. We recorded it on a cassette tape so she could listen to it any time she wanted but none of us knew who the soloist(独唱者) was. These days, I thought the song would be easy to find out. I went home and searched the Internet. Several songs with that title popped up, but none of them was the one Mom loved. I got frustrated.

    Mom's birthday drew near and then one day, I was driving home, listening to our local radio station. A familiar tune came on. It was My Redeemer!As soon as I could, I phoned the station. I got a line on the soloist, who was called Alan Parks. I typed his name into Google and found his home number in South Carolina. Minutes later, I was telling him how much his recording meant to Mom. He offered to ship two CDs out to me personally. I gave him my address. "Red Lion, Pennsylvania?"he said. "Do you know the Logans?""They are our neighbors!""I've been friends with them for 25years," Alan said. "They'll be at my concert at York Gospel Chapel on April 17th. Would you and your mom come too?" We sure would. Mom was excited to hear Alan sing My Redeemer to her, live in concert-on the evening of her 87th birthday.